


One Time That Wyatt Almost Buckled Lucy In, Three Times He Did, And One Time He Didn't

by ShipperWriter



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Lucy Preston/Wyatt Logan, Pre-Lucy x Wyatt, Pre-ship, UST, Wyatt buckling Lucy in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShipperWriter/pseuds/ShipperWriter
Summary: Wyatt slides his seatbelt on easily enough; he's been in enough military vehicles where the big buckles come easily to him.Lucy, on the other hand, spends a full ten, maybe fifteen seconds trying to figure out how the jigsaw puzzle works.{The titles of the first four chapters are the episode names where each chapter occurs.}





	1. Pilot

i.

The first time that they're sent back through time, Wyatt Logan feels, may be the last.

He's been pulled out of his self-contained misery by some agent from Homeland Security who says they have a covert operation with need of his skills. He's slightly doubtful; there's gotta be a few other Delta Forced trained soldiers available.

But he's on leave. Has been for a while. And he's not planning on doing anything else, other than what he's been doing.

While he's sitting in a slightly comfortable but very expensive chair, another woman is shown in. She's probably a little shorter than he is, extremely pensive and nervous and innocent. She asks him if he knows what's going on. She sounds like a school librarian.

And he has whiskey on his breath. 

So he smirks, toys with her, and calls her "ma'am" even though it's completely unnecessary. But he enjoys it.

Then Agent Christopher brings them into the control room and turns their lives upside down.

When he and Lucy climb in the Lifeboat, Rufus is already onboard, doing pre-flight checks. He seems nice enough, but Wyatt doubts he's ever even ridden a motorcycle before. He feels his chances of survival become even more reliant on his own actions.

Then Lucy tries to sit down and reinforces the fact that whoever designed the capsule had no idea what personal space was. They awkwardly tango until they both land in their seats. Wyatt slides his seatbelt on easily enough; he's been in enough military vehicles where the big buckles come easily to him.

Lucy, on the other hand, spends a full ten, maybe fifteen seconds trying to figure out how the jigsaw puzzle works.

Wyatt entertains the notion of helping. For a millisecond. 

Once she finally gets buckled, she realizes that he's had a couple drinks. 

He calls her ma'am again and finally gets a rise out of her.

Thirty seconds later, they're in 1937.

Lucy already has her belt off as he sits, shell shocked that he is about to throw up.

_Well. This sucks._


	2. The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

ii.

The second time that they're sent back in time, Wyatt is joking about the costumes they're wearing - because they're not clothes, they're costumes - when Lucy tries climbing into the Lifeboat, nearly exposing him to the rarely seen corset and frame from an 1860s dress.

He groans, holding his hands up in a futile attempt to ensure that the coarse material doesn't whack him in the face. She finally gets it all inside the cockpit and settles into her seat. The billowy gown takes up so much room that he can't even see his knees, which he knows are somewhere under the dress and inadvertently bumping Lucy's. 

She moves to pull the seatbelt out from her sides and he guesses that she probably won't have it buckled before the capsule arrives in 1865. 

So he groans again, unbuckles his own seatbelt, leans forward, and pulls the harness around her. He gives her a look that is borderline patronizing.

But the look she gives him is jaded and unnerved and unbearable. "I was really hoping I'd never have to get in this damn thing again."

They don't know each other that well; this whole mission has only been a reality for 24 hours, and her life has already been turned upside down in ways that even a soldier rarely knew.

So when he tugs on her harness to ensure it's tight, he glances back up at her. Nothing he says can make it any better. 

But they're probably gonna be doing this for a while, and it couldn't hurt to show a little sympathy.

"Lucy, I'm sorry about your sister," he finally voices quietly. 

She looks up at him and says thanks in return, but not about that. She's closing herself off, something he understands all to well. And as he sits back and locks himself in, he starts to feel like he and Lucy are allies, victims on the same side of an unneeded disaster. Determined to fix it. It seems easy enough to fly back in time and fix the timeline, make the Hindenburg burn when it was supposed to.

Save Jessica.

Fix everything.

But by the time they complete their mission, leaving history somewhat normal, Lucy is even more scarred. Wyatt realizes that they've been looking at time as this easy manipulatable thing, this obedient servant that they can tell what or what not to do. That they can fix everything with a single word or deed. 

But they're wrong; they're the slaves. They're the ones that have to do what history dictates must happen.

He has a bullet hole in his side that Nurse Rufus patched up as best he could, and in spite of the pain he leans forward and holds her hand for a moment. Words helped a little earlier, but right now there's nothing more that he or Rufus can say to help get that look of horrified resignation off Lucy's face.

He pulls his hand back, but not before he buckles her back in for the ride home.


	3. Atomic City

iii.

Their next outing was taking them to 1962.

Las Vegas.

At least the clothes look better than 1865.

He and Rufus both receive somewhat tailored suits that make him feel like a Mafia enforcer. And Lucy, thankfully, wears a dress that couldn't hide half of the Oompa Loompa population underneath it.

She sits down and he leans forward to buckle her in; at this point, it is evenly motivated by chivalry and efficiency. In the time it would take Lucy to strap herself in, Wyatt could have secured all three of them.

He reaches for the straps but stops, distracted by the shimmer on her left hand. He eyes it for a minute, then smiles up at her. "Something you wanna tell us?"

"Huh?"

"Your rock," he replies. "Is that part of the costume?"

She twists her hand awkwardly, and he is about to assume his guess is right until she says, "Oh. No, apparently, I'm _engaged_."

Wyatt stills as Rufus turns his head slightly from the pilot's seat. "Congratulations?" he asks.

"To who?" a bewildered Wyatt asks, just before he snaps himself out of it and reaches for the strap on Lucy's right.

"Exactly," Lucy replies, and he realizes she's just as much in shock as they are. She continues. "His name is Noah. I've never met him before, but there are all these pictures of us on vacation that I have no memory of."

Wyatt by now has the straps securely holding Lucy into the chair, and he spins the chair either way to ensure that it's not snagged on anything. "I mean, ever since we got back from the Hindenburg, my life has completely changed overnight," she states.

Without missing a beat, Wyatt asks, "You gonna take his name or are you gonna keep yours?"

She doesn't miss the humorous twinkle in his eyes as she evenly replies, "I don't even know his last name." She pulls on her white gloves.

Wyatt checks the straps one more time, then he leans back and begins to buckle himself in. "Well, look on the bright side."

"There's a bright side?" she asks, and he almost swears that she knows his next comment isn't going to be serious.

But they need some levity, so he says it anyway.

"You still got the honeymoon to look forward to," he replies, adding a wink.

She shoots a look of her own back at him as Rufus contributes, "Plus, you get to go to Vegas."

With the current situation brought back to mind, she sits back in her seat and takes a deep breath. She doesn't look as rattled as she usually does, but that all will change in the next two minutes.

Wyatt sits back, tugs on his straps, and starts gritting his teeth.

By the time they return, their world has been turned upside down again. Flynn has absconded with an atomic weapon, the man they thought he kidnapped is really working for him, and Wyatt risks turning his life upside down to make things right.

After the briefing, Agent Christopher walks out and Lucy and Rufus soon follow. He eyes the computer that has been tugging at his heart since he walked in the room, sits down and Googles Jessica's name.

He is still staring at the screen, feeling even more broken than before, when Lucy walks back in.

"I forgot my..." She trails off when she sees the look on his face, and she doesn't even have to ask what he's up to. "Did it work?" she asks quietly.

The same four words that have taunted him for four years scream at him from the laptop.

**_SOLDIER'S WIFE FOUND DEAD_ **

He shakes his head so faintly, he's not even sure he shook it.

"I'm... I'm so sorry, Wyatt."

He musters up a small smile as he acknowledges her. "It was a long shot."

Lucy is at a loss for words, but by the time she tries to offer something, he's already snapped back into his gruff exterior. "I'm gonna change out of these clothes," he voices, closing the screen and giving her one last look before he walks out of the briefing room.

When Rufus mentions something later about the reason why they're doing this, Wyatt says nothing apart from his stoic military answer. He doesn't know why he was picked.

But he knows why _he's_ doing this.


	4. The Party at Castle Varlar

iv.

Their next journey through time comes with an extra bonus: era-appropriate clothing that some poor lackey at Mason Industries doesn't have to run halfway across the country to find.

Connor Mason makes a comment about how these outings are going to keep occurring, and it strikes a chord with all three of them. No one says as much, but Wyatt can tell. There's subtle differences.

Rufus is more fidgety, more uneasy. It's become an accepted part of their lives that wherever they end up, Rufus usually gets dealt the bad end of history. Wyatt shrugs it off and gives him an extra pat on the shoulder as he finds the aisle for 1940s in Europe.

Lucy, on the other hand, appears on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

She maintains a normal facade in front of Agent Christopher and Mason, and Rufus probably doesn't have the experience to pick up on it, but Wyatt's a soldier. He's seen guys in Afghanistan, even in basic training, that start to lose their grip on reality, that get so jarred by what they're doing that they can't even recognize themselves in the mirror, all thought droned out by the sound of their heartbeat, suddenly so loud that they would swear it moved location inside the body.

So when he comes out of the dressing room and he sees Lucy standing in front of one of the lit mirrors, white knuckles gripping the edge of the table, he can't help but ask if she's okay.

He knows she's not. But chivalry's not dead yet, and they've got work to do. When she finally lifts her hand and starts to smooth her makeup, he feels confident enough to walk away.

They enter the Lifeboat and Wyatt asks about the mission, how to find their contact. Lucy's voice is slightly quieter, less certain, than normal, but she explains how you have to ask for a specific drink. Wyatt isn't a huge fan of putting all his bets on a shady account from a war that's been won for 70 years, but he doesn't have a choice.

When she starts fidgeting with her buckle, Wyatt's reflexes take over and he starts buckling her in. The last thing he needs is for her to be so self-absorbed in whatever's going on inside her head that her seatbelt isn't properly fastened and she ends up being thrown all over the Lifeboat on the way back to 1944.

The historical figure of the week ends up being Ian Fleming, the man who literally was Bond, and Wyatt doesn't even try to contain his excitement. But Lucy is still down - and it's not healthy, for her or the team.

So he knocks on her door.

Nothing. So he knocks again.

Nada.

He opens the door just enough to see her wiping her face, clenching the dresser, trying to hold it together.

Time for an intervention.

He calls her on it, trying to put on a good front while she's falling apart inside. He's given this speech thousands of times before, and usually when he says buck up or freak out, the guys would snap a salute, go slap themselves or run until they couldn't breathe, then be back in the line.

Lucy, though - Lucy is not a soldier. She's a civilian. She's a historian who's traveling back and accidentally messing up everything she knew. It's not enough for her to just "get it together".

So she asks for help. She opens up about her control freak tendencies, the car accident that almost claimed her life. He opens up about his family, why he soldiers on. And it gives her the answer that she didn't know she was looking for.

He fixes her tie - God, that Nazi pin looks disgusting - but he represses the urge to say something. He calls her "ma'am" and a smile finally resurfaces. He grips her arm softly, encouragingly, before leaving the room and rejoining Rufus and Fleming.

And she soldiers through.


	5. The Alamo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for my long absence! Life's been a little crazy in the last week - no, month, no, year - anyhow, you get the gist.

v.

When they enter the Lifeboat next, Wyatt does so with the knowledge that it'll be his last time.

The news startles him but doesn't altogether surprise him; he had been assigned to this team for one purpose only, and that was to eliminate Garcia Flynn. And he had failed.

The definition of insanity goes through his mind, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

He was beginning to wonder if he was going insane.

So as he sits in his launch seat inside the Lifeboat and Lucy settles in hers, his hands go to his buckles only. He's running on instinct at this point, numbed by the prospect of losing his only asset to save Jessica. He knows who they're bringing in to replace him, and he knows he's competent. He'll do his job because he's supposed to.

And that's when Wyatt realizes that this wasn't just a job anymore. It had become his personal mission, his passion. His life.

He finally found something to live for again, and just like that, it was being taken away again.

So as he casually drops the bomb that he's fired, Lucy and Rufus look sharply at him, shocked. He tries to laugh it off. He starts to mess with the items in his pack, reassuring them that Bam is a good guy - maybe even better than him - and not to worry about the amount of grenades that he's packed in his bag.

She says that he seems pretty okay with this - and he definitely isn't, and he's got the feeling she knows that.

Lucy somehow managed to fasten her buckle before him, no assistance required. Part of him feels proud, in a patronizing sort of way. And part of him feels like he has outlived his usefulness at the right time.

So he makes a comment as he buckles himself in. "If I get one last shot at Flynn, you better believe I'm gonna take it. What are they gonna do?" he asks, giving her a smirk. "Fire me?"

And when he looks up at her, the look she's giving him speaks volumes more than her words. It borderlines on disappointment - he's not even trying to fight this. Sadness is there too - he's leaving them. The bond over the past few weeks seems to be for nothing now.

If only she knew he was feeling all that and more.

He doesn't make eye contact with her until they get back to 1836.


End file.
